Frame Rating: Catalyst 13.8 Brings Frame Pacing to AMD Radeon

Battlefield 3

Battlefield 3™ leaps ahead of its time with the power of Frostbite 2, DICE's new cutting-edge game engine. This state-of-the-art technology is the foundation on which Battlefield 3 is built, delivering enhanced visual quality, a grand sense of scale, massive destruction, dynamic audio and character animation utilizing ANT technology as seen in the latest EA SPORTS™ games.

Frostbite 2 now enables deferred shading, dynamic global illumination and new streaming architecture. Sounds like tech talk? Play the game and experience the difference!

Our Settings for Battlefield 3

Here is our testing run through the game, for your reference.

Immediately we see some good results! The most important comparison here is between the orange line (HD 7990 with the 13.4 driver) and the black line (HD 7990 with the new 13.8 driver and frame pacing enabled). Compare the lines in the first two graphs - FRAPS FPS and observed FPS - notice how the orange line dips dramatically from FRAPS to observed frame rates? The black line does NOT do that indicating we are not seeing runt frames!

The frame times graph clearly shows that difference at work as the black line of the HD 7990 with the latest beta driver and frame pacing enabled is MUCH tighter than the orange line. The result is frame time variance that never gets out of control and stays within 2-3 ms. Looking at the FPS by Percentile graph you can also see that because of these changes the observed frame rates are much higher and actually push the Radeon HD 7990 well ahead of the GTX Titan and the GTX 690.

The same story is repeated here at 2560x1440 - the new 13.8 driver with frame pacing produces a MUCH better result! The frame times aren't quite as consistent and smooth as the GTX 690 still but the improvement over the previous driver iterations is clearly night and day.

Does the new frame pacing setting apply to just the Radeon 7000 series parts or will owners of 6000 series (or perhaps older) cards also benefit? I ask as an interested dual 6970 user, and I haven't really seen anyone talking about anything but 7000 series parts.

* Practice lifting (reading) smaller weight (difficulty) first.
* Do some workouts (skim the Article, and read the suggested backlinks that offer more info) to build up your strength.
* Go back and do more exercise, both when tired and not.
* Practice and take breaks.

That WILL make your Brain hurt, just like exercise makes your Muscles ache; same reason, the same benefit.

Your Brain will hurt less and less as the years pass, and you will be as fast as Bruce Lee (but not at Kung Fu unless you practice that in between reading Technical Materials).

Well, not for a few minutes. 7-mile stage Sportspsychiatrist Dr Steve
Peters, the team participates in friendship visits in which they
meet individuals with disabilities. Strategically placed jets pump out air and suddenly it's like riding
a bike to be more interested in youu as a person,
during his or her safety. Therefore, cyclists can suffer from Patellofemoral pain or Runner's knee syndrome.

You exaggerate a little with the last Sleeping Dogs graphs. The important question is: can a gamer perceive a 5ms variance at below 25ms?? I think the answer is NO.
Sleeping Dogs feels just as smooth on the 7990 as on the 690.

I just the the way the review reveals pretty much everything that AMD is still hiding on the new driver. Don't get me wrong, I'm an APU user; I'm greatly affected by this issue myself... albeit in a small scale.

Congratulations in proving you had solid data on the issue and in making AMD see this was something they needed to address. Also, congratulations on this amazing in-depth analysis of the new driver. It's really well laid-out and very thorough. Excellent work. This is the kind of stuff that keeps me coming back to see the content you produce.

I have said it before and I say it again: This frame-pacing, frame-pacing, FCAT or whatever you want to call the methodology, was the biggest step in gaming and GPU industry since DirectX 9 came along. And Ryan deserves﻿ a lot of credit for picking up from what Tech Report's has done and giving it an all new dimension, to the point AMD couldn't ignore it anymore. THIS IS A MAJOR WIN FOR US, THE GAMING COMMUNITY.
I'm glad this is out but, I only wish this were here sooner, when I had my HD4870X2 back in 2008 or my 2x HD4890 in 2009 or my HD5970 in 2010. After 5 years, I was burnt out and move on to a single-GPU card and got the best one I could afford, a GTX780. We can't have it all, I suppose.

Easy way to test it to go to a benchmark and run it with it off. Pay attention to screen tearing on the background more so then fps and numbers. If you notice the jitter go away when you turn it on and run the same thing, then it works. If not... well... not.

This does make a big difference on my dual 6950s. One easy quick way to notice the difference is to use MSI Kombuster DK11 and turn frame pacing on and off. So that's good, but really except for a few very recent games this fix isn't all that great for me. I don't really think crossfire or sli is a big deal for single screen resolutions. I'm glad AMD is addressing the issue, but it's a very obvious problem, and it's irritating some other review sites didn't mention how obviously bad Eyefinity and Crossifre work with each other. Gaming across 3 monitors is really an awesome experience, and I imagine so is 4k.

I installed this and battlefield 3 seems to be running much smoother for me. There was always the feeling that something was off playing that game but now the whole experience just feels much smoother.

Hey Ryan, good read.
I would just like to point out that since you cannot play on tiled 4K monitors with any Nvidia GeForce card ( they do not support dual monitor surround) means that the 7990 is in fact the fastest solution for 60hz 4K, because The Titan, 780, 690 and any GeForce card for that matter cannot be used in dual monitor surround.

This does make a big difference on my dual 6950s. One easy quick way to notice the difference is to use MSI Kombuster DK11 and turn frame pacing on and off. So that's good, but really except for a few very recent games this fix isn't all that great for me. I don't really think crossfire or sli is a big deal for single screen resolutions. I'm glad AMD is addressing the issue, but it's a very obvious problem, and it's irritating some other review sites didn't mention how obviously bad Eyefinity and Crossifre work with each other. Gaming across 3 monitors is really an awesome experience, and I imagine so is 4k.

This does make a big difference on my dual 6950s. One easy quick way to notice the difference is to use MSI Kombuster DK11 and turn frame pacing on and off. So that's good, but really except for a few very recent games this fix isn't all that great for me. I don't really think crossfire or sli is a big deal for single screen resolutions. I'm glad AMD is addressing the issue, but it's a very obvious problem, and it's irritating some other review sites didn't mention how obviously bad Eyefinity and Crossifre work with each other. Gaming across 3 monitors is really an awesome experience, and I imagine so is 4k.

Nice article! Only it lacks Bioshock Infinite wich i can say is much smoother now(with two 7950s here), but still not perfect or very acceptable and frame tearing is also there. Also i wonder if microstuttering and tearing on hight solid framerates are connected

Just bear in mind that Bioshock Infinite's engine has a stuttering problem all by itself regardless of what GPU you are using.

Tearing is a completely different and well understood issue that happens most commonly at above 60 FPS (or whatever the refresh rate of your monitor is). V-Sync is the fix for tearing, but it can add some input lag depending on how it is implemented.

Just bear in mind that Bioshock Infinite's engine has a stuttering problem all by itself regardless of what GPU you are using.

Tearing is a completely different and well understood issue that happens most commonly at above 60 FPS (or whatever the refresh rate of your monitor is). V-Sync is the fix for tearing, but it can add some input lag depending on how it is implemented.

The reason I ask is because it looks from the graphs that AMD might be using a threshold based algorithm that only kicks in when a certain amount of adjustment is required. This would result in the stepping you are seeing and I am fairly certain that with a bit of signal analysis and some custom software that I can determine what the likely threshold is if there is one.

AMD should have added you to their payroll for exposing this. It is >>tragic<< for a manufacturer not to have tested the true display performance of their cards and having a reviewer showing them how it' s done. Unacceptable.-

Dear amd, I thank you that the "secreted" anal hammering you have been delivering for years and swore you weren't doing has been reduced, even though it took many beatings and incarcerations before you owned up to your problem.
We don't know if you are stupid or blind or both, or just a liar.
Since you likely have 4 or 5 other major secrets right now just like the runts you anal hammered on everyone for years while in public denial, this is not a real thank you, it is just a reminder about who and what you really are.

I've got a 6990 with an arctic cooling cooler on it.
I've also got shit eyes and can't seem to notice any difference yet. Farcry 3 still plays like crap and my golf gti exhaust is still blowing balls, but hey.
I'm very happy AMD are listening and gradually sorting this problem out, I just wish they would be more pro active instead of sorting shit out when people call them out.

Great work! And great review! I hope AMD will take a look at Dual Graphics issue. Because this release doesn't affect Dual Graphics. And It's really annoying, coz It's great deal for notebooks, there is just no contest for AMD A10-4600M(7660G+7690M) combo for that money and productivity. So please aks AMD about Dual Graphics issue. I believe in you.

I have a 7970 crossfire setup. The rest of my computer is listed below: I7 4770k factory speed, gigabyte GA-Z87X-UD3H motherboard, 16gb ram, 650w 80+ gold psu, windows 7 x64. When i try running BF3 with the 13.8 beta driver, I get black thick bands flashing horizontally across my screen, sometimes immediately and sometimes after 5-10 minutes. My game would then crash and I would then get static artifacts of squares with little squares in them with the error titled: Directx Function Get Device Removed Reason. Any help would be much appreciated.